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On Populism
What’s your definition of “Populism?”
As Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, editors of Twenty-First Century Populism, suggest, “Much like Dylan Thomas’s definition of an alcoholic as ‘someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you’, the epithet ‘populist’ is often used in public debate to denigrate statements and measures by parties and politicians which commentators or other politicians oppose.”
But they go on to try to formulate a more rigorous definition. Their research focuses on Europe. It was conducted well before anyone could have dreamt of the rise of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders; it even antedates Obama’s rise to power:
We define populism as: an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice.
Populism, they suggest,”proposes an analysis designed to respond to a number of essential questions: ‘what went wrong; who is to blame; and what is to be done to reverse the situation?’ Put simply, the answers are:
- The government and democracy, which should reflect the will of the people, have been occupied, distorted and exploited by corrupt elites;
- The elites and ‘others’ (i.e. not of ‘the people’) are to blame for the current undesirable situation in which the people find themselves;
- The people must be given back their voice and power through the populist leader and party.
‘The people,” they continue,
constitute a community, a place where … there is mutual trust. Moreover, the community is a place where “it is crystal-clear who is ‘one of us’ and who is not, there is no muddle and no cause for confusion.” By contrast, the enemies of the people — the elites and ‘others’ — are neither homogeneous nor virtuous. Rather, they are accused of conspiring together against the people, who are depicted as being under siege from above by the elites and from below by a range of dangerous others.
Populists, therefore,
invoke a sense of crisis and the idea that ‘soon it will be too late.’ … This journey is usually led by a charismatic leader who is portrayed as knowing instinctively what the people want. As Canovan says, ‘populist politics is not ordinary, routine politics. It has the revivalist flavour of a movement’ and ‘associated with this mood is the tendency for heightened emotions to be framed on a charismatic leader.’ … Of course, the greatest sacrifice is made by the populist leaders themselves who are forced to put to one side their normal (and preferred) profession and instead enter the dirty arcane world of politics in order to save democracy. Seeing the normal procedures of parliamentary politics as frustrating the popular will, the populist advocates a direct relationship between ‘the people’ and their government. …
“The rise of populism in Western Europe,” they write — and remember, this was in 2004,
is in large part, a reaction to the failure of traditional parties to respond adequately in the eyes of the electorate to a series of phenomena such as economic and cultural globalization, the speed and direction of European integration, immigration, the decline of ideologies and class politics, exposure of elite corruption, etc. It is also the product of a much-cited, but rarely defined, ‘political malaise,’ manifested in steadily falling turnouts across Western Europe, declining party memberships, and ever-greater numbers of citizens in surveys citing a lack of interest and distrust in politics and politicians. Fostered by the media, an antipolitical climate is said to have grown throughout Western European societies in which people perceive politics to be more convoluted, distant and irrelevant to people’s lives and politicians to be more incapable, impotent, self-serving and similar to one another than in the past. … In particular, these alternatives have emerged in the shape of populists who offer straightforward, ‘common sense’ solutions to society’s complex problems and adopt forceful ‘man in the street’ communication styles which are able to galvanize at least some of those who have lost faith in traditional politics and its representatives. They offer a ‘politics of redemption’ in contrast to the Establishment’s ‘politics of pragmatism.’ They claim that radical changes for the better are possible and that they can make them happen. In short, they promise to make democracy work.
So assuming we use this definition — and I think it’s a good working definition — what happened since 2004 to give us such a stunning rise in populism — first in Obama, now even more in Trump and to a lesser extent Sanders, but also, interestingly, far more widely across the world, in Putin, Orbàn, Le Pen, Erdoğan, etc.?
It’s now a platitude that the Western democracy’s élites are out of touch with their voters. But why exactly would these elites be so out of touch with their voters? It’s the voters who elected them, after all.
It makes me wonder whether we’re really discussing “out-of-touch elites.” Or might the phrase be a stand-in for the more Marxist notion of class? Would we find, do you think, that we could substitute “elites” for “those who own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others,” and “disaffected voters” for “those who do not own any means of production or the ability to purchase the labor power of others, but rather sell their own labor power?” It’s not quite exact, but perhaps something closer to that is going on.
Might the wave of populist politics we’re now seeing across the globe be some mutant expression of the class conflict Marx predicted? And if so, what’s causing it?
Published in General, Politics
Don’t forget about eligible voters who choose not to vote because they believe the major parties and their leaders are ignoring their concerns.
Miss Berlinski, class is not a Marxist term. Only Americans think it is–but I have not met many Americans who say the British are Marxists, hence the class system.
It is charming to see people try to claw their way back to a distinction between few & many. I applaud the effort even if it’s intended to again blind people to the distinction.
It is disappointing, meanwhile, to read the silliness about crisis.–As though that is less part of non-democratic politics!–Populism is merely democracy dissatisfied. & it has nothing to do with crisis. There is a typical Christian prejudice blinding people who are not even very Christian: Democratic politics when it gets really democratic can very well be erotic rather than moralistic. It is perhaps impolite to speak about these matters, but not all conquests start with some figure deserving ridicule shrieking, How dare you, sir!, how dare you!–or saying, I’ll ne’er consent, as the case may be-
Meaning? Practical job scarcity?
Affirmative action is a good example of such.
The elite vs. populist conflict is more typical of crony capitalism than of real capitalism. Crony capitalism is addressed in the book Why Nations Fail in which the authors contrast inclusive economies and extractive economies in order to demonstrate the clear superiority of the first over the second in creating widespread prosperity.
Common features of inclusive economies are widespread competition, creative destruction and political pluralism. Features of extractive economies are monopolies run by the government or oligarchs, protection of political or corporate incumbents and one-party ruling systems. During the cold war, the West had a more inclusive economy and the Soviet Union an extractive economy.
More recently, the wave of populism has risen with the perception that we have gravitated towards a more extractive system. Note for example the repeated bailouts of failed capitalists and the revolving door between these firms and the government. Note also that incumbent powers are becoming more difficult to dislodge as we consider yet another Clinton and yet another Bush for President.
Angelo Codevilla had a pretty good analysis of this, as I recall.
Yep, that is the effect.
The conceit that populists never make is that “We the People” are the problem. The growth of the administrative state, every entitlement, ever unwon war, was not some conspiracy by elites or even a close-run thing. But in nearly all cases, every expansion of federal power was promised in advance by the politicians who enacted them and celebrated by the masses (i.e. “The People” voted for them)
I wrote about this back in February, long before the rise of Trump and I find it even more pertinent now:
http://themodcon.com/problem-populism/
May I second the opinion–people are getting all the democracy they can desire-
I was explaining to my dad about my fancy ferragamo drivers: “If I spend my money now, you old bastards can’t take it from me later.”
Can’t confiscate delicious dinners already consumed either.
This one, I believe.
Perhaps the revolution is occurring. Trump seems to be leading it.
Democracy may be the worst form of government except for all the rest, but I can’t think of a democracy in history that didn’t end up with exactly the government it deserved.
Trump is:
Why is this platform derogatorily deemed ‘populist’? Because he presents himself with lots of showmanship? Really that simple is it?
The Codevilla article is from 2010, and it is a must read, Claire. He details how the class divide began in post-war America, and I suspect a similar process occurred in Europe.
Fancy pants talk calls this a princple-agent problem, and it is a thorny mess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem
Populism is basically a realization that the interests of politicians aren’t aligned with the interests of voters.
There is an interesting background to this issue. Ricochetti have been complaining about how the elites dictate “who” will be the nominee and about how little loyalty the Republican elites have to the voters at large. It was measured as a “we pour, you drink” kind of position, whether we wanted to drink or not.
So Republican / conservative / libertarian loyalty to the decision makers was tenuous at best.
Now we have a candidate who is saying something that lots of people believe to be true. He might say it in a manner we don’t appreciate but he is saying it and he has lots of approval in comparison with his competitors.
There is a phenomena whereby potential voters lie to pollsters. They don’t want to be seen as racist. They don’t want to be seen as xenophobic, or homophobic, or whatever other undesirable trait is being promulgated by the liberal-progressive media (or their college instructors who grade them), so they lie. They say one thing and then vote differently.
It may well be that a lot of Trump’s supporters are quiescent right now, but …
There is a federal law, passed in 1952 by a Democrat congress and signed by a Democrat president which permits the president to discriminate against people trying to immigrate to this country. He can do it if he sees it as desirable to protect this country. Democrat congress, Democrat president. It can be used against everyone or against select groups.
Here’s a pretty good example of why Trump has an audience:
Mr Trump … claims parts of Britain are no-go areas because of Islamic extremism.
The British government is in a spitting contest with Trump and serving British police officers are weighing in on his side.
I think populism is very close to fascism. Populism is socially conservative, generally pro-religion, patriotic/nationalistic, but economically either socialist or redistributionist.
Bernie Sanders is not a populist. He is a socialist, if not a communist. He is sometimes called a populist to obfuscate this fact.
I think that much of the current appeal of populism is the result of basically conservative people being fed up with crony capitalism, which is a genuine problem on the conservative side.
Yes, that’s so–but let us recall that pre-war politics was about scientific rationalism, too. So also with post-war pacifism picking right up from pre-war pacifism-
This seems to be a recurring theme. Trump says something received as outrageous and then slowly information comes out that backs him up, at least in part.
I consider myself a populist of sorts and I’d guess that 5 percent of that description applies to me. As to your closing question, I’m going to go away from my computer and think about it while I work out in the garage.
I agree that this is the perception of many people. It is not accurate. The numbers on federal spending are:
2005: $2.47 trillion, 19.0% of GDP
2009: $3.52 trillion, 24.4% of GDP
2014: $3.51 trillion, 20.3% of GDP
Don’t get me wrong, I wish that the Republicans in Congress had accomplished more. Yes, they won solid electoral mandates in 2010 and 2014 — but so did Obama in 2012. In these circumstances, I think that cutting spending by over 4% of GDP is a major accomplishment.
Yep. I remember that there Muslim celebrations on 9/11, though how big the crowds were in Jersey and Ramallah had blurred over time. But when the pearl clutchers denied that it ever happened and tried to bully the public: “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” my instinct was pro-Trump.
Populism is at least as old as the Gracchi brothers. It undoubtedly traces back further than that, to the origin of the “those selfish #$#* took our stuff” meme.
Only Marx would be dimwitted enough to predict something that predated him. Only Marxists would be ignorant enough to listen.
hold your horses here. The 2009 bloat is because of the bailouts, right, so hardly a useful statistic in this exercise.
It’s like pornography, it’s hard to define but…you know the rest.
This is ridiculous. Claire quotes 560 words searching for a definition of a word that is a heck of a lot less complicated than that.
“Populism” is not an ideal or a coherent philosophy. Simply put it is a form of politics (which is neither right nor left) that promises great return for little pain. It is usually impractical and, when implemented, a disaster. It is just “popular” on the stump.
Hitler was a populist. So was Lenin. And Huey Long. It takes as many forms as necessary.
You’re not debating populism. What you’re really debating are the conditions that enable it. And that’s simple, too. Anytime a vast chunk of a nation’s people feel powerless any promise to restore or transfer power to them is, well, “popular.”